Category Archives: Unified Messaging

Like many other vendors, Avaya showed off its latest virtualized wares at VMworld in San Francisco this week. While putting its best face forward at VMware’s annual conference and exhibition, Avaya also experienced further behind-the-scenes executive intrigue.

Sources report that Carelyn Monroe, VP of Global Partner Support Services, resigned from the company last Friday. Monroe is said to have reported to Mike Runda, SVP and president of Avaya Client Services. She joined Avaya in 2009, coming over from Nortel.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Avaya has suffered another defection. James Stevenson, described as a “business-services expert” in a story published online by CRN ChannelWeb UK, has left Avaya to become director of operations for reseller Proximity Communications.

In some quarters, Kennedy’s reunion with Vellequette is being construed as a circle-the-wagons tactic in which the besieged CEO attempts to surround himself with steadfast loyalists. It probably won’t be long before we see a “Hitler parody” on YouTube about Avaya’s plight (like this one on interoperability problems with unified communications).

As public companies, Nokia and Research In Motion have drawn considerable press coverage relating to their ongoing struggles. Nary a day passes without a barrage of articles on the latest setbacks and travails affecting both companies. Some of the coverage is decidedly morbid, even ghoulish, with death-watch speculation on how soon one company or the other might be sold off or otherwise expire.

Perhaps because it is private, Avaya has escaped such macabre notice from the mainstream business media and the industry trade press. Nonetheless, speculation has arisen as to whether the company, richly backed by private-equity sponsors Silver Lake Partners and TPG Capital, has a future any brighter than the dim prospects attributed to RIM and Nokia.

Abandoned IPO Hope

At this particular juncture, the prospect of an IPO, which once seemed tantalizingly close for Avaya, seems a remote and forlorn hope. As I’ve noted on a couple occasions before now, Avaya’s IPO was scuppered not only by its wan growth profile, but also by industry and macroeconomic headwinds that show no sign of abating.

If no IPO is in the cards, what happens to the company? While at least one blogger has speculated that bankruptcy could be an option, I suspect the deep-pocketed private-equity sponsors might have no choice but to prop up Avaya until a buyer can be found. Given Avaya’s tepid growth prospects, its daunting long-term debt overhang, a recent weakening of channel sales, and stiffening competition across its product portfolio, the company is unlikely to find itself in the driver’s seat in any negotiations with a prospective buyer, presuming one can be found.

Stranded in Purgatory

Meanwhile, Avaya stakeholders, including the company’s employees, are mired in a purgatory. Sources have suggested the company will consolidate facilities and further reduce headcount, but no major announcements have been made on either front.

With an IPO seemingly off the table as an exit alternative, all eyes turn to the company’s private-equity sponsors. One potential delaying tactic, which we could see before the end of this calendar year, is the potential departure of president and CEO Kevin Kennedy, who has served in that dual capacity since January 2009. We’ve already seen revolving doors in the executive suites along Avaya’s mahogany row, and “new blood” in the CEO office would buy time for the company’s financial backers to devise and articulate a compelling narrative for customers, channel employees, employees, and potential strategic acquirers.

We’ll have more insight into Avaya’s circumstances soon. The company is due to report its latest quarterly results within the next month or so.

The point of this post, though, will be to look forward. Perhaps Cisco can learn an important lesson from its Cius misadventure. If Cisco is fortunate, it will come away from its tablet failure with valuable insights into itself as well as into the markets it serves.

Negative Origins

While I would not advise any company to navel-gaze obsessively, introspection doesn’t hurt occasionally. In this particular case, Cisco needs to understand what it did wrong with the Cius so that it will not make the same mistakes again.

If Cisco looks back in order to look forward, it will find that it pursued the Cius for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways. Essentially, Cisco launched the Cius as a defensive move, a bid to arrest the erosion of its lucrative desktop IP-phone franchise, which was being undermined by unified-communications competition from Microsoft as well as from the proliferation of mobile devices and the rise of the BYOD phenomenon. The IP phone’s claim to desktop real estate was becoming tenuous, and Cisco sought an answer that would provide a new claim.

In that respect, then, the Cius was a reactionary product, driven by Cisco’s own fears of desktop-phone cannibalization rather than by the allure of a real market opportunity. The Cius reeked of desperation, not confidence.

Hardware as Default

While the Cius’ genetic pathology condemned it at birth, its form also hastened its demise. Cisco now is turning exclusively to software (Jabber and WebEx) as answers to enterprise-collaboration conundrum, but it could have done so far earlier, before the Cius was conceived. By the time Cisco gave the green light to Cius, Apple’s iPhone and iPad already had become tremendously popular with consumers, a growing number of whom were bringing those devices to their workplaces.

Perhaps Cisco’s hubris led it to believe that it had the brand, design, and marketing chops to win the affections of consumers. It has learned otherwise, the hard way.

But let’s come back to the hardware-versus-software issue, because Cisco’s Cius setback and how the company responds to it will be instructive, and not just within the context of its collaboration products.

Early Warning from a Software World

As noted previously, Cisco could have gone with a software-based strategy before it launched the Cius. It knew where the market was heading, and yet it still chose to lead with hardware. As I’ve argued before, Cisco develops a lot of software, but it doesn’t act (or sell) like software company. It can sell software, but typically only if the software is contained inside, and sold as, a piece of hardware. That’s why, I believe, Cisco answered the existential threat to its IP-phone business with the Cius rather than with a genuine software-based strategy. Cisco thinks like a hardware company, and it invariably proposes hardware products as reflexive answers to all the challenges it faces.

At least with its collaboration products, Cisco might have broken free of its hard-wired hardware mindset. It remains to be seen, however, whether the deprogramming will succeed in other parts of the business.

In a world where software is increasingly dominant — through virtualization, the cloud, and, yes, in networks — Cisco eventually will have to break its addiction to the hardware-based business model. That won’t be easy, not for a company that has made its fortune and its name selling switches and routers.

Those of you following the Avaya saga might want to check out the company’s latest quarterly financial results, which are available in a Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

For Avaya backers hoping to see an IPO this year or in 2013, the results are not encouraging. In the three-month period that ended on March 31, Avaya generated revenue of $1.257 billion, with $637 million coming from product sales and $620 million from services. Those numbers were down from the correspondence quarter the previous year, when the company produced $1.39 billion in revenue, with product sales generating $757 million and services contributing $633 million. Basically, product sales were down sharply and services down slightly.

No Growth in Sight

Avaya also is seeing a weakening in channel sales. Moreover, growth from its networking products, on which the company had once pinned considerable hope, is stagnating. In the six-month period ending March 31, the company generated just $146 million from Avaya Network sales, down from $154 million in the preceding year. For the latest three-month period, concluding on the same date, networking sales were down to $64 million from $76 million last year. It is not projecting the profile of a growth engine.

Things are not much better in Avaya’s Global Communications Solutions (GCS) and Enterprise Collaboration Solutions (ECS) groups, which together account for the vast majority of the company’s product revenue. At this point, Avaya does not have a business unit on its balance sheet showing growth over the six- or three-month periods for which it filed its latest results.

Meanwhile, losses continue to mount and long-term debt remains distressingly high. Losses were down for both the three- and six-month periods reported by Avaya, but those mitigated losses were derived from persistent cost containment and cuts, which, if continued indefinitely, eventually (as in maybe now) hinder a company’s capacity to generate growth.

Interestingly, Avaya’s costs and operating expenses are down across the board, except for those attributable to “restructuring charges,” which are up markedly Avaya’s net loss for the six months ended on March 31 were $188 million as compared with $612 million last year. For the three-month period, the net loss was $162 million as compared with $432 million the previous year.

IPO Increasingly Unlikely

Although Avaya is not a public, and — company aspirations notwithstanding — does not appear to be on a trajectory to an IPO, markets reacted adversely to the financial results. Avaya bonds dropped to their lowest level in fourth months in response to the revenue decline, according to a Bloomberg report.

Avaya’s official message to stakeholders is that it will stay the course, but these results and market trends suggest a different outcome. Look for the company to explore its strategic options, perhaps considering a sale of itself in whole or in part. A sale of the floundering networking unit could buy time, but that, in and of itself, wouldn’t restore a growth profile to the company’s outlook.

Like many other prospective public offerings, Avaya’s pending trick-or-treat IPO would appear to be in suspended animation. The company and its agents wanted to get the deal done this year, but there’s been no word on whether it will go ahead before the sands in 2011’s hourglass run down.

“We don’t know when Avaya will have its IPO, but we learned a couple weeks ago that the company will trade under the symbol ‘AVYA‘ on the New York Stock Exchange.

Long before that, back in June, Avaya first indicated that it would file for an IPO, from which it hoped to raise about $1 billion. Presuming the IPO goes ahead before the end of this year, Avaya could find itself valued at $5 billion or more, which would be about 40 percent less than private-equity investors Silver Lake and TPG paid to become owners of the company back in 2007.”

Making Moves While Waiting for Logjam to Clear

Speaking of Silver Lake and TPG, they must feel a particular urgency to get this deal consummated. As mentioned in my previous post, they want to use the proceeds to pay down rather substantial debt (total indebtedness was $6.176 billion as of March 31), redeem preferred stock, and pay management termination fees to Avaya’s sponsors, which happen to be Silver Lake and TPG. That’s plenty of incentive.

The lead underwriters for the transaction, when it eventually occurs, will be J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs & Company.

Avaya hasn’t been sitting on its hands while waiting to go public. The company acquired SIP-security specialist Sipera, a purveyor of session border controllers (SBC) and unified-communications (UC) security solutions, early this month. It followed that move with the acquisition of Aurix, a UK-based provider of speech analytics and audio data-mining technology.

Long before that, back in June, Avaya first indicated that it would file for an IPO, from which it hoped to raise about $1 billion. Presuming the IPO goes ahead before the end of this year, Avaya could find itself valued at $5 billion or more, which would be about 40 percent less than private-equity investors Silver Lake and TPG paid to become owners of the company back in 2007.

Proceeds for Debt Relief

Speaking of which, Silver Lake and TPG will be hoping the IPO can move ahead sooner rather than later. As parents and controlling shareholders of Avaya, their objectives for the IPO are relatively straightforward. They want to use the proceeds to pay down rather substantial debt (total indebtedness was $6.176 billion as of March 31), redeem preferred stock, and pay management termination fees to its sponsors, which happen to be Silver Lake and TPG. (For the record, the lead underwriters for the transaction, presuming it happens, are J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs & Company.)

In filing for the IPO, Avaya has come clean not only about its debts, but also about its losses. For the six-month period that end on March 31, Avaya recorded a net loss of $612 million on revenue of $2.76 billion. It added a further net loss of $152 million losses the three-month period ended on June 30, according to a recent 10-Q filing with the SEC, which means it accrued a net loss of approximately $764 million in its first three quarters of fiscal 2011.

Big Losses Disclosed

Prior to that, Avaya posted a net loss of $871 million in its fiscal 2010, which closed on September 30 of 2010, and also incurred previous losses of $835 million in fiscal 2009 and a whopping $1.3 billion in fiscal 2008.

Revenue is a brighter story for the company. For the one months ended June 30, Avaya had revenue of more than $2.2 billion, up from $1.89 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2010. For the third quarter, Avaya’s revenue was $729 million, up from $700 million in the corresponding quarter a year earlier.

What’s more, Avaya, which bills itself as a “leading global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions,” still sits near the front of the pack qualitatively and quantitatively in the PBX market and in the unified-communications space, though its standing in the latter is subject to constant encroachment from both conventional and unconventional threats.

Meanwhile, Gartner lists Avaya among the market leaders in its Magic Quadrant for unified communications, but the threats there are many and increasingly formidable. Microsoft and Cisco top the field, with Avaya competing hard to stay in the race along with Siemens Enterprise Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. ShoreTel is gaining some ground, and Mitel keeps working to gain a stronger channel presence in the SMB segment. In the UC space, as in so many others, Huawei looms as potential threat, gaining initial traction in China and in developing markets before making a stronger push in developed markets such as Europe and North America.

There’s an irony in Microsoft’s Lync Server 2010 emerging as a market-leading threat to Avaya’s UC aspirations. As those with long memories will recall, Microsoft struck a valuable UC-centric strategic alliance — for Microsoft, anyway — with Nortel Networks back in 2006. Microsoft got VoIP credibility, cross-licensed intellectual property, IP PBX expertise and knowledge — all of which provided a foundation and a wellspring for what Microsoft eventually wrought with Lync Server 2010.

The Nortel Connection

What did Nortel get from the alliance? Well, it got some evanescent press coverage, a slippery lifeline in its faltering battle for survival, and a little more time than it might have had otherwise. Nortel was doomed, sliding into irrelevance, and it grabbed at the straws Microsoft offered.

Now, let’s fast forward a few years. In September 2009, Avaya successfully bid for Nortel’s enterprise solutions business at a bankruptcy auction for a final price of $933 million. Avaya’s private-equity sponsors saw the Nortel acquisition as the finishing touch that would position the company for a lucrative IPO. The thinking was that the Nortel going-out-of-business sale would give Avaya an increased channel presence and some incremental technology that would help it expand distribution and sales.

My feeling, though, is that Avaya overpaid for the Nortel business. There’s a lot of Nortel-related goodwill still on Avaya’s books that could be rendered impaired relatively soon or further into the future. In addition to Nortel’s significant debt and its continuing losses, watch out for further impairment relating to its 2009 purchase of Nortel’s assets.

As Microsoft seeks to take UC business away from Avaya with expertise and knowhow it at least partly obtained through a partnership with a faltering Nortel, Avaya may also damage itself through acquisition and ownership of assets that it procured from a bankrupt Nortel.

My view of the commercial prospects for the Cius has shifted significantly during the past year, from when Cisco first announced the pseudo-tablet to now, as it prepares to ship the device, presumably in something approximating volumes. Back in the summer of 2010, I thought the Cisco Cius might have a fighting chance of currying favor within the company’s installed base, playing to IT decision makers with a practical and broad-based extension of its video-collaboration strategy.

Changing Landscape

Some things have changed since then. The Apple iPad franchise, as we all know, has gone from strength to strength. iPads now proliferate in small businesses and enterprises as well as in homes. They’ve crossed the computing rubicon from the consumer realm to the business world. They, like iPhones and other smartphones, also have helped to engender the much-discussed “consumerization of IT,” whereby consumers have insisted on bringing their favorite devices to the office, where they have been gradually and grudgingly accepted by enterprise IT departments under imperatives from CFOs to bring down IT-related capital and operating expenses.

That has cut into Cisco’s appeal. Cisco, as a big old-school enterprise player, didn’t count on consumerist employees having any appreciable say in the navigation of the enterprise IT ship. Cisco, as the Flip debacle, made obvious, is not exactly a popular consumer brand, notwithstanding the barrage of television commercials it has unleashed on couch potatoes during the last several years.

One could also argue that the commoditization of a broad swathe of enterprise-networking equipment, led by Cisco competitors, also is slashing into the giant’s dominance as well as its margins. Moreover, it remains to be seen how the inexorable march of virtualization and cloud computing will redefine the networking universe and Cisco’s role as the brightest star in that firmament.

Penny-Pinching as New Normal

Then there are macroeconomic factors. Everywhere in the developed world, IT buyers at SMBs and large enterprises alike are trying to save hard-earned money. Cisco can wave cost-of-ownership studies all it wants, but most network and technology buyers do not perceive Cisco products as money savers. Consequently, there’s a big push from buyers, as perhaps never before, for open, standards-based, interoperable solutions that are — you guessed it — cheaper to buy than the proprietary solutions of yore.

So, it all amounts to a perfect storm driving right through the heart of John Chambers’ once-peaceful neighborhood. This is true for Cisco’s entire product portfolio, not just the Cius, but I’m writing about the Cius today — not that I’m obsessed with it, you understand — so let me pull things back into tighter focus now.

Trying to Stop the Phones from Bleeding

With the Cius, Cisco still seems to the think that the old rules, the old market dynamics, and its old customer control still apply. I thought more about this yesterday when I received an email message from a regular reader (imagine that!) who pointed out to me that Cisco is right about one thing: The Cius isn’t a tablet.

I’ll quote directly from his message:

The Cius isn’t a tablet — it only looks like one. It’s a desktop and video phone. Cisco is in this business because PCs and wireless handsets are subsuming the function of the enterprise desktop phone (thanks to Microsoft Lync, Apple iPhone, Android, etc.). Their phone business is a multi-billion dollar per year business. I agree — the Cius is a distraction, but they have to do *something* to protect that desktop phone revenue stream. Tough spot.

These are perceptive comments, and they’re borne out by recent articles and analysis on Cisco’s Cius push. All of which makes me feel, even more than when I wrote my Cius post of earlier this week, that the product is doomed to, as Mike Tyson said in one of his best malapropisms, “fade into Bolivian.”

Gambit Won’t Work

Cisco has made a lot of money selling desktop IP phones, but that gravy train, like so many others, is drawing fewer passengers at each station. The trends I mentioned above — stronger consumer-oriented offerings from competitors in smartphone and tablets, the consumerization of IT, the enterprise focus on cutting IT costs wherever possible, and a concomitant pull away from premium proprietary technologies — are threatening to eviscerate Cisco’s IP phone franchise.

Hence, the Cius. But, even as a defensive bulwark, it doesn’t work. At the end of the day, CIsco might see an IP phone replacement when it looks at the Cius through its rose-colored glasses, but customers will see it for what it is — a relatively high-priced, seven-inch tablet running a smarphone-version of Android, and tied to proprietary video, voice, and collaboration solutions. Both the Cius and the AppHQ go strongly against the tide of IT consumerization and mobile-platform heterogeneity. That’s not a tide Cisco can reverse.

With sublime brevity, my reader-correspondent said it best: Tough spot.